Cyberpunk 2077 – Basic Guide (with Tips)

An organized brain dumb of things that a new player learned playing through the game and doing research from many different sources along the way.

Guide to Basics

All credit goes to Worra!

Character Creation

1. Male / Female

2. You can choose 4 defaults to get you close, and then tweak facial, body, implant, and tatoo features from there. Virtually complete control. And then some…

• All facial features are permanent, so choose wisely. But make it cool.

3. Life Paths

Way to choose your starting area and unlock specific dialog options and questlines.

Mostly aesthetic / role playing once you get into the game.

1. Street Kid
2. Nomad
3. Corpo(rate)

4. Attributes are the only thing here that affects your character’s performance.

• See the attributes section below for more information on which of these to choose.

5. Difficulty

• Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard.
• If you’re an experienced gamer that is likely only going to play through the story once, make it a challenge! I find Hard enjoyable and challenging without being frustrating.

Combat, Controls, & Interface

• Gameplay interface
• Leveling up / Progression
• Menu interface
• Map Interface & Points of

During gameplay, in the top left corner, you have:

• Your level, blue number.
• Your health, red bar with numbers showing current/max. To regen, eat food, use injections (or wait in combat with perks).
• RAM slots, used for quickhacks in combat. To regen, leave combat (or wait in combat with perks).

There are 3 things to level up:

• Street Cred – green bar, similar to notoriety or reputation, unlocking some items for you from some vendors, and some missions.
• Level – blue bar. This will unlock the ability to use new gear, and give you perk and attribute points.
• Skills – yellow numbers, based on where attributes are allocated (which sets the max) and what you use during combat.

In the menu (i), you’ll also be able to see:

• Weight (based on what you’re carrying)
• Money (Eurocash aka “Eddies”)
• The Afterlife (the goal of the game) with a % of completion along the main storyline

Map

• Use Z to filter the mess of icons on the map.
• If there is a number next to an icon, that means there are multiple in the area and icons are consolidated.

Combat Controls and Tips

• When starting combat, start with a ping to discover everything, including the access points. There are many quickhacking abilities that help you discover what you’re up against before starting combat. Test these out!
• Both C and left CTRL crouch. C is a toggle, left CTRL is press and hold.
• You can crouch behind cover, and aiming will peek over to the side or above the cover.
• When in melee combat, block just before a swing is about to land to counter it.
• Reloading is best done with 1 bullet left. Reloading with no ammo in the chamber takes longer.

Attributes, Skills, and Perks

Attributes > Skills > Perks

Attributes cannot be reset.

Perks can be reset later in the game for $100k.

Attributes

• 5 attributes, with a max of 20 points in each.
• Passively increase stats.
• Allow points to be spent on skill trees.

1. Body

• Physical power.
• Good for melee builds and physical tasks, and leverages blunt weapons, shotguns, and SMGs.
• Increases Health, Stamina, damage with fists/gorilla arms, melee damage, movement penalty reduction when grabbing an enemy or holding an LMG, longer grapple duration.

2. Reflexes

• Gun or blade builds, critical chance.
• Increases evasion, crit chance, and mantis blade damage.

3. Intelligence – Hacking and non-lethality

• Increases RAM, and quickhack damage and duration

4. Technical Ability – Engineering, vehicles, bots

• Increases armor

5. Cool – Stealth, assassination, snipers, persuasion

• Increases crit damage, all resistance, stealth damage, monowire damage, and decreases chance for enemy detection

Skills

• 12 unique skills, each assigned to the 5 attributes.
• Leveled up automatically as you do things like use weapons, take damage, sprint, etc.
• Capped at the number of attribute points (see above).

Body Skill Trees:

• Annihilation – Heavy weapons (shotguns, LMGs)
• Athletics – Physical abilities (forcing open doors, removing turrets, human shields)
• Street Brawler – Non-blade melee weapons and fists

Reflexes Skill Trees:

• Handguns – Pistols and small firearms
• Assault – Automatic rifles, snipers
• Blades – Knives and swords, giving bleed and poison effects

Intelligence Skill Trees:

• Breach Protocol – Hacking computers, doors, and turrets
• Quickhacking – Remote/ranged hacking (hacking enemies implants or grenades)

Technical Skill Trees:

• Crafting – Increases quality and effectiveness of crafted items, and more materials from deconstruction
• Engineering – Technical world interactions (repairing systems) and tech weapons

Cool skill Trees:

• Stealth – Move unseen and apply poison to enemies
• Cold Blood – Improves combat while low health

Perks

• Provide small benefits to stats or rewards.
• 200+ perks.

Perk Recommendations – Adjust based on playstyle, these should be considered for almost every build early in the game.

• Mechanic (Technical) – Helps get more crafting materials from disassembly
• Mech Looter (Technical/Engineering) – Loot more weapon mods and attachments
• Cold Blood (Cool/Stealth) – Passively grants perks/stats each time you defeat enemies.
• Pack Mule (Body/Athletics) – Increase carrying weight by 60
• Advanced Datamine (Intelligence/Breach Protocol) – Increase access point hack eurodollar rewards by 50%
• Grenadier (Technical/Engineering) – Shows grenade explosion radius
• Crouching Tiger (Cool/Stealth) – Move +20% faster while stealth.
• Regeneration (Body/Athletics) – Increase health recovery in combat by 10%
• Invincible (Body/Athletics) – Increase max health by 10%
• True Grit (Body/Athletics) – Increase stamina by 10%
• Slow and Steady (Reflexes/Blade) – Increase armor by 15% while moving
• Blast Shielding (Technical/Engineering) – Reduce damage from explosives
• True Craftsman (Technical/Crafting) – Enables crafting rate items (Epic, Legendary separate, later)
• Can’t Touch This (Technical/Engineering) – Immune to damage from your own grenades

Scrapper (Technical/Crafting) – Automatically disassembles junk in inventory. This will disassemble things that sell very well). If you really want to min/max your experience, do not get this, since it will auto-disassemble gray items, some of which sell for $750+. I got this in error…and its easy. I’m not too worried about min/maxing, so no biggie.

For a new character, there is a minimum of 3 of each attribute, and a max of 6.

Weapons

This will cover the different weapon types, rarities, mods, and attachments.

Weapons can be found from vendors, loot caches, or enemies.

There are 3 slots, with the 4th being your fists.

Types:

• Melee – Close quarters combat.
• Smart – Plug into body, homing bullets. Include SMGs,
• Power – High damage, can ricochet, Pull enemies apart, explosive. Include shotguns.
• Tech – Rapid fire, or charge up to hit enemies through walls. Include snipers. Tech is usually the best because you can sit behind cover and shoot enemies that can’t shoot you back.

Weapons include melee weapons and guns.

Guns can be either smart, power or tech, variations of shotguns, snipers, SMGs, LMGs, assault guns, and pistols.

Melee weapons include katanas, bats, hammers, electric batons, or throwable.

Rarity

• Common (white)
• Unusual (green)
• Rare (blue)
• Epic (purple)
• Legendary (orange)
• Iconic (orange-ish, cyber-looking background) – do not disassemble these, they only drop once.

Modifications

• Attachments – Physical and visible add-ons to weapons including scopes and silencers.
• Software Mods – Installed chips to change stats or purpose, including biochemical or non-lethality.

Recommendations

• Use what you enjoy most. As you use types you enjoy, you’ll get more skills and upgrades for it.
• Keep different kinds of weapons on you to adapt to the scenario.

Things To Do

The journal (J) and the map (M) can show

Main Story Line

• You can get through the main storyline (30 missions) in about 25-40 hours.
• Most people recommend taking your time to do side jobs, gigs, and world events

Side Jobs

• Given by main story line characters, but don’t advance the plot.
• Great way to get extra cash, items, or experience.

Gigs

Similar to side jobs, but not involving main characters

• Gun for hire – neutralize a target
• Search and Recover – find something
• Agent Saboteur – sabotage a target
• SOS: Merc Needed – rescue someone
• Thievery – steal something

World Events

All of these boost street cred, just by walking up and killing bad guys, sometimes with other objectives.

• Suspected Organized Crime Activity – Clear out an area taken over by the gangs.
• Bounties – Most gang members have a 1-5 star rating. The more stars, the more street cred. This will usually come while doing gigs, jobs, and the main story line.
• Assault in Progress – Defend NCPD being attacked.
• Reported Crime – Secure evidence, usually entailing looting a cache, reading from a laptop, etc.)
• Cyber Psycho – Mini-boss fight that rewards money too.

Cyberware

Cyberware enhances your character’s body with implants, and are installed via Ripper Docs around the city. It is not possible to play a character without cyberware (you need at least an eye and grip modifications)

Cyberware can either be:

• Active – You can use them.
• Triggered – Provide benefits or capabilities when conditions are met.
• Passive – Always on and helping.

Modifications can give you mantis blades on your arms, slow down time, improve move speed and precision, regeneration and endurance, fiber optic lasso, provide healing, etc.

Number of Slots:

• Frontal Cortex = 3
• Ocular = 1
• Circulatory = 3
• Immune = 2
• Nervous = 2
• Integumentary = 3
• Operating System = 1
• Skeleton = 2
• Hands = 1
• Arms = 1
• Legs = 1

Recommendation:

• Adapt to your playstyle.

Crafting

Disassembly

• This converts items (usually weapons) into spare parts to be used for crafting and upgrades.
• You can do this any time through selecting an item in the inventory menu (z)
• There’s some min/maxing and funny flipping that you can do around which items to disassemble, but in general disassemble all weapons that you don’t want to use (Except iconic — I’ve read this in several places, still not sure why. My hypothesis is that these have globally unique effects and only drop once)
• Hacking access points by plugging into them also rewards a payout of components.
• Advanced tip: Some drinks can also be disassembled. They can be purchased for ~$3 each, disassembled for green materials which could sell for ~$8 each.

Crafting

• This can be used to craft some of the best items in the game.

Upgrades

• These are strongly recommended for your favorite weapons to keep them up to current level.
• You cannot upgrade an item if it will put the level requirement above your current level. Just keep going until you can’t any more.

Vehicles

Vehicles are an alternative to fast travel points to help you get around Night City faster.

Notes

• There are differences in performance between different types, but otherwise just aesthetics.
• None can fly.
• You can jack them off the street easily.
• If you own one, you can call it to you. (v)
• Would not recommend buying one since they’re easy enough to come by.

Types

• Economy
• Executive
• Heavy Duty
• Sport
• Hypercars
• Motorcycles

Vehicle control notes:

• If you want to get out of moving vehicle quickly, it will come to a stop MUCH faster and you won’t take damage by simply exiting. No need to slam on the breaks first.
• When taking sharp corners, tapping the break key will cause the vehicle to skid/drift, making it easier.
• You need Brute Force to throw people out of cars. Hyper cars require Athletics of ~7+.

Other Tips 

• Pick up everything! Gear can be disassembled into components, or sold for money.
• Early on, boost your carry capacity through the “Pack Mule” perk and a skeleton slot cyberware upgrade.
• Favor disassembling/deconstructing white and green gear
• Food and drinks have little to no weight. Favor deconstructing over selling these if not needed.
• For hacking access points with multiple options (1-3), try to shoot for the option furthest down on the list.
• The goal for hacking access points is to connect the options by alternating between columns and rows, so you “snake” across the interface.